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Malls: It's a love/hate relationship

Growing up first on the north shore of Long Island in the '80s and then later as a teenager in Florida, going to the mall loomed large on my list of favorite recreational activities. It was the place our parents first let us go and have hours of unsupervised shopping time, meeting up with them at the designated pretzel stand or Orange Julius shop at a certain hour--pre cellphones, no less! How did we ever find each other? It was the place we went for cheesy formal portraits, buying our first bras, having our ears pierced and ordering dye-able satin shoes when we were flower girls in weddings. The mall was also where I had my first brush with shoplifting--I didn't take anything, but a friend of mine in middle school had talked herself into thinking it was OK to steal perfume and cosmetics from department stores, and I was supposed to be her "lookout". (We didn't stay friends for long). Later, as a teen, the mall was the place I bought bag fulls of cheap, ill-fitting clothes I didn't need and where I went to cut class, eat fro yo and fantasize about prom dresses at Bebe and Cache.

These days, after living in NYC for ten years and having weaned myself off the mall long ago, whenever I do make trips back, I'm often easily exhausted and overstimulated by all the people, crowds, groups of teenagers (Read: myself--15 years ago). So I loved this essay in The New York Times mag last Sunday: It's about an Iranian woman living in the US whose 13-year-old daughter desperately wants to be part of mall culture...just for an afternoon. The mother resists, but eventually gets obsessed with the stores herself, and winds up so caught up in the fitting room that she's late to meet her own kid:

"'You're 15 minutes late,' my daughter said. 'We were worried.' I apologized to the responsible members of our party, explaining how I'd gotten caught up in all the great Dana Buchman outfits."

LOL. Please read this story and discuss. Any great mall stories of your own to share?